Please help! almost beat a 1300 player!

I've never beat a 1300+ player at blitz and I got so close this time but the game ended up in a draw. I really felt like this was my game but I was in time pressure and couldn't find a mating combination. I know there was a check mate in there somewhere especially at the end, can someone please point out what was the easiest way to check mate him? Still can't believe I drew that game, it's pretty frustrating! Sometimes opponent's higher rating intimidates me.

I believe the fix is that you got distracted by White's counterplay on 32, when it could've been safely ignored. You still had the initiative. Had you moved Rah8 on move 32, threatening mate+1, and if White responds Kc1, then Rh2. Connected rooks on the 2nd rank with White's king locked in the 1st from this position is winning for Black.

Thanks pfen and rooperi. What I don't like about chess is that you can play a much better game than your opponent and make 1 bad move and it's a draw/loss. But maybe that's what makes this game addicting.

@Snar - nice find! I have a bad habit of constantly looking at the clock when I play blitz. Once I see around 40 sec I enter panic mode regardless of position. I noticed on youtube GMs don't look at their clock once during their blitzes.

@Arcanus thank you! I lose a lot on time, i'm probably a good 50 points higher once I learn to get comfortable with the clock and about 100 points higher with longer time controls. But I do have a nice collection of awful games under my belt, this one is probably one of my strongest/luckiest.

Generally in blitz play, when you have a heavy piece material edge in an endgame, you would look to restrict the opponents king to a single rank/file (ensuring they have at least two squares to move back and forth between). Neutralise any pawn moves they have, by either capture or locking up the position. And then when the only legal moves they have are king moves, and the heavy piece restricting them cannot be attacked directly, premove running one of your pawns down to promotion, and slide the new piece safely onto the king's rank/file, to mate. All of this can be premoved, so is useful in blitz I think when you have so much of an advantage

So for your game, the opponents king goes to your back rank with 56. Kc8. You now have to opportunity to play 56. ...Qa7, placing the queen safely a knights jump from the opponents king, and restricting his movement. Since his pawn is locked up, he must play 57. Kd8, by which you can restrict him further, to only 2 squares, by playing 57. ... Kf7. White's king can now only jump back and forth between c8 and d8, allowing you to leisurely promote the f-pawn, and slide it to the 8th rank safely for mate

You may have had a forcing mate earlier in the game, however since the position simplified like this, you can easily premove and be safe on time

@Genghis yes i missed that one thank you. I just switched to 5 2 from 5 0 and feel a lot more comfortable that way. Sudden death blitzes can be stolen by a weaker player who manages his/her time better. Maybe once I improve i can go back to 5 0.

@emp23 Thank you very much, that makes so much sense. I'm surprised I never learned that. I have a premium account and I've been looking for a good endgame video and couldn't find one. Your comment is what I was looking for thank you.

Very well played! Seems like you understand some concepts that are way above your level, that allowed you to get this completely winning position.

Some of the lost opportunities have already been pointed out (33...Rh8, though the move was actually even more effective at 32, before Rc1 was played). I would also like to point to this particular point in the game, on move 22:

While almost any move is objectively winning here, it doesn't hurt to take the time to think about how you finish off white for good. 22...Qh3 is fine, but it's much harder to defend against 22...0-0-0. There's no way for white to stop Qh3 anyway, so, of course the best move is to bring another piece into the attack! After 0-0-0 what is white to do? The "natural" response would be to play 23.Rfe1 since white will have to play this move anyway for the king to escape, but as you can see in the diagram it's already too many pieces in the attack when black has the second rook ready to jump in.

Always look for ways to bring more pieces into an attack! These are often the best attacking moves especially if the defender doesn't have any really stingy defensive moves at his disposal.

This way of thinking would be a good lesson to take from this game. At move 32 if you had thought "My attacking pieces have no decisive strikes at the time, and my opponent isn't really threatening anything... can I bring another piece into the fray?" don't you think you would have found 32...Rh8 immediately?

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